


the magician's magic show

by lusciousmouthboy



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Abuse, Anger, Blood, Body Horror, Dark Comedy, Drabble, F/M, Gore, M/M, Minor Joseph Kavinsky/Ronan Lynch, Not Beta Read, Other, Ronan Being an Asshole, The Magician - Freeform, Weird, abuse is from adam's dad so if you've read the books it's that, adam parrish pov, adam pov, cheng shoutout, dream - Freeform, dream drabble, i'm not good at drawing lines, kavinsky is a tool, maybe spoilers for trk but no i don't think so, messy messy, none of this is very heavy really aside from like the body horror i guess?, not fluffy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-01
Updated: 2016-09-01
Packaged: 2018-08-12 08:11:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,155
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7927255
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lusciousmouthboy/pseuds/lusciousmouthboy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Paging Persephone! </p><p>Parrish is dreaming, and it's not pretty.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the magician's magic show

**Author's Note:**

  * For [n0cturne](https://archiveofourown.org/users/n0cturne/gifts).



> This wasn't the fic I meant to write today. This wasn't the pynch I meant to write for you, Aldon. 
> 
> Alas, it is the fic I wrote today, and it is the pynch I wrote for you, (today), Aldon. Happy be-late-lated birthday!
> 
> This is a dream of Adam Parrish's, and it's TW:BLOOD. (It's short, but somewhat graphic. ~Someone~ should probably *pinch* him. !wide-eyes raised eyebrows suggestive opened-mouth emoji!) Also, Robert Parrish makes an appearance and is abusive. Go figs.
> 
> PS. I have NO IDEA where this could take place in canon. Somewhere, at some point, I'm sure. (???) If anyone has any hypotheses pls do share! :)DDDDD
> 
> PPS. The song's "The Magician's Birthday" by Uriah Heep, and the quote is from Numbers 22:06.
> 
> I OWN NO THING AND NO ONE!

 

 

the magician's magic show

 

 

 

Adam lunges, stretching behind a thick, tiny, black curtain.

His wrists whorl multi-coloured circles. Watching them is making him dizzy.

At the front of the stage, a beryl red curtain undulates with an Aglionby ease.

“Mister Parrish!” screeches a concerning blonde. Her English accent is cinematic.

“What is this!?!” She fusses over his polyester/plastic-blend tuxedo.

“Dollar General. Halloween sale,” Ronan chimes as he passes by.

“Goodness me, mis-cast indeed. Well, go on!” She directs.

Adam hesitates.

“Get on with it, boy!” The paper English blonde gives Adam a crisp shove.

He trips onstage.

“Get on with it, Parrish!” Ronan mimics, flapping his hands.

She might’ve been Ronan’s mother, once, Adam considers.

The follow-spot is burning his face. He feels his skin tan suddenly, slightly.

He furrows his eyebrows and squints into the audience. He sees Gansey and Blue and Noah, each propping up the other’s thumb.

“Thumbs up,” they giggle.

Adam fingers the off-brand red cummerbund he’s wearing that matches the off-brand red bowtie he’s wearing.

“Ready. Alright!” He blushes, and coughs on his accent.

“For my first trick, well, naturally, I’ll be pulling talking animal crackers from my hat,” he grins.

Ronan and Kavinsky snicker from the right wing.

“They were all... all I - They were the only thing I could afford,” Adam concedes into the hat.   
He looks up, his face is sweating, precipitating; it is tanning more, too. 

His cummerbund suddenly unclasps.

The audience is silent.

 

Then, not:

“Awkward.”

“That's poor scholarship boy, isn't it?"

“Scum.”

“You owe me a fifty, Cheng.”

“Filth.”

“Tacky.”

“Cheap.”

they murmur. Blue claps giddily, like she doesn’t hear them. Gansey smiles, the smile of the obliviously sleeping king.

 

Adam loses something inside of himself.

“Okay, and, ADA - ABBA - ABRHAM CADAVER!”

He waves a black rubber wand and taps the black hat, once.

He reaches into it and pulls out a hand.

The audience shrieks.

Adam looks. The hand stops being a part of a body right after its wrist. Just,  
\- swip! -  
cut, clean. Large.

The hand is as tan as Adam's, and familiar. It curls into a hugely knuckled fist.

It’s his father’s, of course.

Of course it's his father's.

It wants to strike him. Adam knows this by the way it is postured, the way it wriggles away and into and against his grip. Adam flinches, and drops his father’s fist.

The audience laughs uproariously. Gansey, Blue, and even Noah are laughing,  
laughing,  
laughing.

Ronan isn’t laughing. He’s in the left wing, shaking his head.

“Fucking shame,” Kavinsky says, and he licks up the side of Ronan’s face. Adam watches himself watching in Kavinsky's sunglasses.

“You tried, Lynch,” Kavinsky reassures, “but lost fucking cause.”

“I didn’t try anything. Not a goddamn thing, man,” Ronan says roughly. 

The fist knocks Adam off of his feet.

He tries to look back up at the two boys, or beasts. He finds them again inside a folded corner of his eye. 

Ronan’s jangling his car keys and a beryl red rat with an orchid for a tail.

“Keep up, Parrish.”

The fist swings by his left ear, and Adam hurriedly taps it with the black rubber wand - that is or had been - lying by his side. 

His father’s fist falters, then, drops to the stage a plastic form. 

Adam notices suddenly that his hand feels missing. He raises it up and sees nothing but empty space. His left arm stops just above the wrist and is bleeding a dazzling beryl red. 

The audience goes crazy. 

Some students are stamping, some students are whistling, and some students are tossing their programs up to the ceiling. Blue and Gansey and Noah are clapping politely. 

Adam frantically tries to get to his feet, but his arm keeps slipping on the stage. 

He tries seven times. He manages to scrabble upright. 

He bows, blushing and grinning.

The audience is cheering.

“CATCH!” 

Ronan tosses him a chainsaw. 

“For the other one! You know, symmetry, or whatever!”

“Do it, pussy.” Kavinsky goads.

Adam hesitates.

“Do you need me to do it for you?” Kavinsky  
Adam’s father  
Adam’s mother,  
says.

She flickers. The Magician passes her. He is coming to centerstage. 

“Not yet!” Adam flails.

Ronan cocks his head to the side curiously, watching Kavinsky, or Adam’s parents, crouch.

“I was trying to be helpful, jackass,” he mutters.

“I didn’t ask for your help!” Adam shouts, riffling the feather of the hat-wearing, blonde-bobbing, two-dimensional Magician approaching him.

“Yeah,” Ronan agrees, not convincingly.

“Liar,” Adam replies.

“Yeah,” Ronan agrees, absent-mindedly, as the Magician begins cutting Adam’s other hand off with the chainsaw. 

Adam watches it happen. It doesn’t hurt.

A vermillion anger rushes him. 

He steps.

He treads not very carefully over the Magician, pressing him to the stage. The chainsaw grows oil-spill-black wings and flies up to the balcony.

Adam rips off his other hand.

The audience gasps.

He pays them no more mind. He walks offstage to meet Ronan in the right wing. His arms are half-cased meat without their hands. They squeeze Ronan’s cheeks together, slip,  
then,  
his neck, slip then, his chin and  
they keep slipping, bleeding, but Ronan doesn’t move.

He is a stock shock tableaux.  
He is disbelief suspended.

“It DOESN’T _HURT_!” Adam gnashes.

“It doesn’t _HURT_!” Ronan taunts.

Adam surges. He grabs Ronan’s buzzed scalp and pries it from his skull. It’s elastic and squelchy in his fist. 

“LIAR!”

The little bits of buzzed hair, the skin, fat, capillaries and veins all snap! back atop Ronan’s head.

His eyes are comedically wide.

“And AGAIN!” cries Gansey at the piano. He’s offstage in the pit, wearing a sherbet lemon suit.

“Ready, all?” He glances over his shoulder at the audience, smiling, “And a-one, and a-two, and a-three, four five GO!”

He begins a rocking melody and sings, leading the audience:

 _“In the magic garden_  
_some were singing_  
_some were dancing_  
_while the midnight moon shone brightly overhead_

 _The stars so gaily glistened_  
_And the sphinx in silence listened to_  
_the Magician tell of_  
_lives that he had led.”_

“Adam fucking Parrish,” Ronan smirks.

“I’m not asking,” Adam snaps, and reaches for the beryl rat.

“Patience, Parrish.” Ronan drawls, stealing Adam’s Virginian vowels.

He tosses the rat into the yowling audience surrounding Noah, beating on a drumkit.

“Hey, mutt,” Ronan breathes, “fetch.” 

Adam closes his eyes. 

"I'm tired, Ronan."

"Yeah? Good for you, man, good for you."

Ronan whistles as he shuts the stagedoor after him. It's the one with the sign reading ‘YES’, in blinking pearl light.

Thunder sounds from a dimensional distance.

“Absolutely spiffing, Noah!” Gansey compliments. 

Blood sinews axel grease cartilage nails marrow rats orchids spill from Adam's sleeves.

“‘For I know that he whom you bless is blessed, and he whom you curse is cursed.’” Adam recites, frowning.

Gansey, Blue, Noah, and the audience pay him no more mind.

“Hang on a second,” he pauses, “Is that from the Bible?” 

 

 

Adam Parrish wakes.


End file.
